La Romana - part three...Tuesday

Today we worked hard in the sun mixing concrete and doing a bucket brigade to pass the concrete up the scaffolding. Talk about a primitive way of accomplishing this task. 

There's no big concrete truck rolling in to dump mixed concrete into the forms. A big pile of sand, rock, cement and water is mixed by hand using shovels. 

Then the buckets were filled and passed to Mike who handed them up to John or Charlie who then passed them up to Andrew who then handed them to this guy who was standing fully upright on top of this super high wall. He'd pour the concrete into the form and toss the buckets down. Part of the time I retrieved the buckets and passed them back to be placed for filling. We all did various jobs but I could barely stand to look up at that nice guy on the top. I'm told they call him Papa John and he is from Haiti. 

That's our team leader Charlie DeLuca in the green shirt. He's from Louisiana. His brother, Andrew is the one just above him on the scaffolding. 

This was tough work and tomorrow we'll be at it again. We have to go all the way around the top of the building. The roof is then attached to these headers. The part were doing on the ground is nothing compared to what those guys up top are doing. Those buckets are so heavy and each one has to be lifted overhead. I just pray everyone is safe. Trusting the Lord will keep them and us all in His care.